Horse and Xiongnu

choi

Andrew Curry, How the Horse Powered Human Prehistory; Wide-ranging warriors made Mongolian empire a melting pot, sweeping gene study shows. Science (magazine), Nov 6, 2020, at page 646.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/ ... -multiethnic-empire

Note:
(a) This is a review of two research article (both articles had been published online, which explains the review was published in print before both articles were in print):
(i) Jeong C et al, A Dynamic 6,000-Year Genetic History of Eurasia's Eastern. Cell, 183: 890 (Nov 12, 2020)
https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)31321-0.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/sc ... i/S0092867420313210
(ii) Li Y et al, Early Evidence for Mounted Horseback Riding in Northwest China. Proc Natl Acad Sci, 117: 29569 (Nov 24, 2020).
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29569

(b) "Until now, the only accounts of the Xiongnu came from their enemies. Chinese records from 2200 years ago describe how these fierce mounted archers from the wide-open steppes of today's Mongolia clashed with armies in what is now northwestern China. Their onslaughts spurred the Chinese to build what would become known as the Great Wall of China on their northern border, as protection against the mounted nomads. They also started to raise cavalry armies of their own.  The equestrian empire of the Xiongnu left no written records. * * * Two studies—a sweeping survey of ancient DNA from more than 200 individuals across 6000 years and an analysis of horse skeletons from just before the rise of the Xiongnu—trace population movements across Central Asia and the key role played by horsemanship. * * * Horses were probably domesticated by the Botai culture around 3500 BCE near what is modern Kazakhstan. Horses may have been mainly used for meat and milk at first, and later began to pull wheeled chariots. * * * a team led by Choongwon Jeong [鄭中元; assistant professor] of Seoul National University and Harvard University's Christina Warinner [assistant professor there; PhD from Harvrd in 2010] sampled and sequenced DNA from human remains found in Mongolia. The results, which they report today in Cell, span the period from 5000 BCE all the way to the heyday of another horse-riding culture—that of Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire, around 1000 CE."
(i) the first world record of 匈奴:
秦「惠文君 [325 BC 正式称王, followed by heads of other nations] * * * 七年 [328 BC]，樂池相秦。韓、趙、魏、燕、齊帥匈奴共攻秦 [under 公孙衍 合纵]。秦使庶長疾 [庶長 is the highest tanked official under king; full name: 嬴 疾] 與戰 修魚 [name of ancient place, in present-day 河南省新乡市原阳县] ，虜其 [韓] 將申差，敗趙公子渴、韓太子奐，斬首八萬二千。」  《史記》〈秦本紀〉  (史記 Records of the Grand Historian (from 太史公書; c 100 BC); 秦 unified China in 221 BC.)
(ii)
(A) horses in East Asian warfare
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_East_Asian_warfare
(section 1 Horse warfare in national contexts, section 1.1 China: "There were horse-driven chariots of the Shang (c 1600 – c 1050 BC) and Zhou (c 1050 – 256 BC) periods, but horseback riding in China, according to David Andrew Graff, was not seen in warfare prior to the 4th century BC [when] King Wuling of Zhao (340–295 BCE), after realizing the advantages of light cavalry warfare over that of the heavy and cumbersome chariots")

赵武灵王 started 胡服騎射 in 306 BC.
(B) David A Graff is professor of History in Kansas State Univ.
David A Graff and Robin Higham (eds), A Military History of China. Univ Press of Kentucky, 2012.
(iii) Botai culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botai_culture
was named after a modern-day village of Botai.
(iv) Jeong (surname)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeong_(surname)  
(also often spelled Chung, Jung or Jong; three homophonous hanja. 鄭, 丁 and 程)

(c) "Genetic studies of Western European populations have shown that around 3000 BCE, the Yamnaya—mobile herders of cattle, sheep, and goats—pushed west from the steppes of what is today Russia and Ukraine and triggered a dramatic genetic turnover in Europe. Skeletons from Bronze Age Mongolia had shown the Yamnaya also moved east and introduced their dairy-oriented pastoralist lifestyle there. But they left no lasting genetic traces in Mongolia, the oldest samples in the new study show.  The ancient DNA does show that 1000 years later, another group from the steppes, called the Sintashta, left a lasting imprint. They also brought fateful cultural changes to Mongolia's grasslands, as earlier archaeological studies had shown."
(i)
(A) Yamnaya culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamnaya_culture  
("Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: Я́мная (romanization: yamnaya) is a Russian adjective that means 'related to pits (yama),' and these people used to bury their dead in tumuli [meaning mound] ([Russian”] kurgans) containing simple pit chambers")
(B) Rossosh Burial Mounds.
https://www.donsmaps.com/rossosh.html
(view the sketch whose caption read: "Section and plan of the barrow from the cemetery of Kamyshevkha near Bakhmut, lower Donets basin")

This Rossosh is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossosh
("Rossosh, Rossoshansky District, Voronezh Oblast")
(ii) Sintashta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sintashta

(d) "Eleven Xiongnu-period skeletons showed genetic signatures similar to those of the Sarmatians, nomad warriors who dominated the region north of the Black Sea, 2000 kilometers across the open steppe from Mongolia."
(i) Sarmatian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmatians  
("flourishing from about the fifth century BC to the fourth century AD * * * Their territory, which was known as Sarmatia (/sɑːrˈmeɪʃiə/) to Greco-Roman ethnographers, corresponded to the western part of greater Scythia" / section 1 Etymology: unclear)
(ii)
(A) Scythia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythia
(view map which depicts Scythia in ancient GREEKS' eyes (now we know Scythia is much bigger, especially in its eastean part, as attested in Scythian Culture of en.wikipedia.org; "Sarmatians were part of the wider Scythian cultures * * * The Scythians—the Greeks' name for this initially nomadic people—inhabited Scythia")

There is no need to read the rest.
(B) Introducing the Scythians. British Museum, undated (blog)
https://blog.britishmuseum.org/introducing-the-scythians/
("The Scythians (pronounced 'SIH-thee-uns') were a group of ancient tribes of nomadic warriors who originally lived in what is now southern Siberia. Their culture flourished from around 900 BC to around 200 BC, by which time they had extended their influence all over Central Asia – from China to the northern Black Sea.  From September 2017 you can discover these fearsome warriors and their culture in a special exhibition at the British Museum. * * * Until the 1700s, a lot of what we knew about the Scythians was cobbled together from a range of ancient sources – none of them written by the Scythians themselves as they didn't 'do' writing. * * * Siberia is vast. It stretches over eight time zones and borders Europe, China, the Pacific Ocean and Arctic Circle. It is made up of three major ecological zones – icy tundra at the north, dense forest in the central part, and mixed woodland and grassy steppe in the south. This last section forms a wide grassy corridor of rich grazing from Mongolia and China to the Black Sea. It is here that the Scythians began to develop more efficient ways of riding horses which meant they could move bigger herds to new grazing grounds over larger distances.  The Scythians developed horse breeding and riding to a new level. They were accomplished riders and did not use spiked bits or muzzles. Scythian horse gear (saddles, bridles, bits etc) was also highly developed and functional, durable and light. We know this because the large burial mounds contain large numbers of sacrificed horses. These were accompanied by halters, bridles and saddles, and occasionally whips, pouches and shields")

choi

Jeong C et al, A Dynamic 6,000-Year Genetic History of Eurasia's Eastern. Cell, 183: 890 (Nov 12, 2020)
https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)31321-0.pdf

Introduction:

"Recent paleogenomic studies have revealed a dynamic population history on the Eurasian Steppe [which is divided into Eastern Steppe and Western Steppe], with continental-scale migration events on the Western Steppe coinciding with Bronze Age transformations of Europe, the Near East, and the Caucasus (Allentoft et al., 2015; Damgaard et al., 2018a; 2018b; Haak et al., 2015; Mathieson et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2019). However, despite advances in understanding the genetic prehistory of the Western Steppe, the prehistoric population dynamics on the Eastern Steppe remain poorly understood * * *  While also covering parts of modern-day China and Russia, most of the Eastern Steppe falls within the national boundaries of presentday Mongolia.  * * * Once introduced [see Discussion], ruminant dairying became widespread by the Middle/Late Bronze Age (MLBA, here defined as 1900–900 BCE) * * *

"From the late first millennium BCE onward, a series of hierarchical and centrally organized empires arose on the Eastern Steppe, notably the Xiongnu (209 BCE–98 CE), Türkic [突厥] (552–742 CE), Uyghur [回鹘 or 回纥] (744–840 CE), and Khitan (916–1125 CE) empires. The Xiongnu empire was the first such polity in the stepp * * * The Mongol empire, emerging in the thirteenth century CE, was the last and most
expansive of these regimes


Discussion: "Migrating Yamnaya/Afanasievo steppe herders, equipped with carts and domestic livestock (Kovalev and Erdenebaatar, 2009), appear to have first introduced ruminant dairy pastoralism ca. 3000 BCE (Wilkin et al., 2020a) but
surprisingly had little lasting genetic impact, unlike in Europe (Allentoft et al., 2015; Haak et al., 2015; Mathieson et al., 2015). By the MLBA, ruminant dairy pastoralism had been adopted by populations throughout the Eastern Steppe (Wilkin et al.,
2020a), regardless of ancestry, and this subsistence has continued, with the additions of horse milking in the LBA and camel milking in the Mongol period (Wilkin et al., 2020a), to the present day (Bat-Oyun et al., 2015; Kindstedt and Ser-Od,
2019). Puzzlingly, however, there is no evidence of selection for lactase persistence over this 5,000-year history, despite the repeated introduction of this genetic trait by subsequent migrations of groups from the west. This suggests a different trajectory of lactose adaptation in Asia that to date remains unexplained.

Note: What is or are inside parentheses are citations (with first author and year of publication). There is no need to read the rest.